January 6 – Daily Notes – Amanda

Genesis 13:5-15:21:

8-13 – Because Abram was Lot’s uncle, he should have received first choice of the land, but he humbly allowed Lot to choose first. Lot chose the better land, but landed himself in a town that disobeyed God.

19-24 – Abram wisely refuses riches from the king of Sodom so that he could not attribute his wealth and blessings to anyone or anything other than God.

1-5 – God makes a huge, impossible sounding promise to Abram. He was old and had no children so it seemed impossible that his offspring would be numerous.

6 – Abram’s faith in God’s ability to do the impossible was counted to him as righteousness. In Hebrews chapter 11 there is a list of various Bible characters who’s faith was credited to them as righteousness. Our faith in Jesus is our only hope for righteousness.

13 – This refers to when the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt.

Matthew 5:27-48:

29 – What lengths are we willing to go to in order to be blameless?

31-32 – In Deuteronomy Moses gives the hard-hearted Israelites instructions on how to divorce because they were doing it anyway. Jesus makes divorce that much more difficult.

33-37 – Letting your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’ asks you to be trustworthy on your own merit so you don’t have to put the responsibility on something else.

38-42 – This kind of teaching would be jarring to the Jewish religious leaders because Jesus is changing up the teachings of Moses. The religious leaders did not realize that he wasn’t negating the laws, only making them more difficult by asking his followers to display additional mercy and grace.

43-48 – It’s easy to love those we like. Jesus calls us to love like God loves.

Psalm 6:1-10:

5 -–Sheol was where ancient Jews believed all people went after death. It was not a pleasant place. David is asking for his life to be spared because he would not be able to praise God from Sheol.

While it is many of our tendencies to blame God when we face difficult times, David sought God’s help in difficult times.

Proverbs 1:29-33:

There are consequences for not following the wisdom of the Lord. It gets us into trouble and while it’s easy to blame God for not saving us from the destruction, it’s harder to accept that it was by our own actions we received the consequences.